1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a micro reactor having micro flow-guiding blocks. In this invention, guiding the flow direction toward the catalytic portion can increase the overall reaction efficiency. More turbulence is generated to obtain a better mixing. Plus, its structure is simple.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Fuel cell is always a power generating method with low pollution and high efficiency. There are many different types of fuel cell. The primary fuels used in a typical fuel cell are hydrogen and oxygen. However, if the fuel cell is installed on a vehicle, how to store hydrogen and oxygen on this vehicle is a big issue to be discussed. The most common solution is to utilize the steam reforming of methanol (briefly referred as SRM) method to produce hydrogen. The related chemical reactions of the SRM method can be listed as follows:CH3OH+H2OCO2+3H2  (1)CH3OH2H2+CO  (2)CO+H2OCO2+H2  (3)
In this SRM method, it is required to heat up a catalyst above a specific reaction temperature. Therefore, it is important to know how to design a reactor, especially including how to heat up, how to control the temperature inside, how to select a catalyst, how to make a best distribution for the catalysts, etc.
Furthermore, as illustrated in FIGS. 1, 2 and 3, the conventional reactor of steam reforming of methanol (SRM) includes:
a first gas flow channel 810 including a first inlet 812 and a first outlet 811;
a second gas flow channel 820 including a second inlet 821 and a second outlet 822; and
a catalytic converter 830 including a plurality of micro channels 831 and at least one catalytic membrane 832 so as to connect the first gas flow channel 810 and the second gas flow channel 820.
Of course, a predetermined surface of the first gas flow channel 810 can be coated with a specific catalytic layer 90 (such as ZnO), as shown in FIGS. 2 and 3 (but not shown in FIG. 1) to enhance related chemical reactions.
Referring to FIG. 3, when a gas flows through the first gas flow channel 810, the possibility of contacting with the catalytic layer 90 (such as ZnO) is low. Accordingly, the entire reaction speed will be slow. Thus, the overall efficiency of the conventional reactor is poor.
Regarding the above-mentioned equation (3), if CO mixes with H2O very well, more hydrogen will be produced. Besides, because there is not any barrier or block inside the channel, the gas flows through the channel as a laminar flow state. There is no turbulence in the channel. Therefore, the mixing for gases is not good. It also causes the overall chemical reaction efficiency to be poor.